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Ben Hartman

Sep 21, 2026

0:47
Is there anything at all in that book, and I know it's a very rich book in terms of what's in it, but what's the one thing over the last 10 years that really stands out? Is it what you just said? Is it lead with the customer, work back from there?
1:05
Oh, I would say that in our case, that's number one is to keep that focus on the relationship with the customer.
1:14
And probably number two is to not lose track of muda.
1:20
Muda being the term in Japanese for waste.
1:22
We have one word for waste in English, just waste, and we think of a waste as something that...
1:31
A fairly simple definition, it's just trash.
1:34
Something we're throwing in a trash can or something we're done using, but waste is a nuanced concept for the Japanese.
4:23
There's an order to focus on here.
15:00
who's a professor
15:01
at MIT.
15:02
And he did some of the original research on lean.
15:05
And he took a team of researchers over to Toyota a couple decades ago and really wrote the source book on lean production.
15:13
And he said, and he's consulted very widely about for the government and large companies.
15:20
And he said, really all Lean boils down to is this.
15:24
You started with the customer and you work backwards from there.

15 MINS LATER

30:40
How would you compare it to what's right behind you where it's more cropping
MikeHOST
0:36
So, um, where do you want to start with the rebrand or do you want to like dig right into formulas? Yeah.
0:41
Yeah.
0:42
So it's funny that you mentioned the old one.
0:44
So, you know, we did this a few years ago through probably almost four years ago now.
0:48
And, uh, To put it very concisely, we didn't have all the right players on the board and employees, contractors, partners with different things.
0:58
And the way that that rebrand went just wasn't – it didn't land the way that we expected it to land.
1:05
It was a great point of learning for me as a business owner, as somebody in my own journey of learning how to run a company.

1 HR LATER

MikeHOST
61:38
How did this even happen? Yeah.

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